


satis superque (enough and more than enough)

by Kahika



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 13:39:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13835904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/pseuds/Kahika
Summary: Five firsts and something they stop counting.





	satis superque (enough and more than enough)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BardofHeartDive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardofHeartDive/gifts).



> _i._

  
Ashley's been in the medbay her fair share of times: Getting checked up on after Eden Prime, getting patched up after missions, sitting with Kaidan when he has a migraine. Surprisingly, she's never seen it from this angle. When she can't raise her hand to block the fluorescents overhead, she squints and turns her head to the side, which takes far more effort than it should.

On the bed across from her, Kaidan looks the way she feels.

"Kaidan," she whispers, or tries to. She gets it on the third attempt.

He opens his eyes and turns his head towards her. "Ash," he croaks. "How...?"

An excellent question. The last order Ashley remembers hearing on the radio was for Joker to come pick _her_ up.

"The Commander split the squad," Chakwas explains somewhere above them. "Shepard, Garrus, and Liara rescued Williams from Saren and made sure the bomb went off; Wrex and Tali found you and the salarians fighting off the geth."

"Crazy," Ashley murmurs. Not that she's ungrateful - Kaidan is a superior officer, a strong biotic, great with an omni-tool, a medic, and her best friend here even without the other side of her interest in him - but what a risky, foolish move with a nuclear bomb primed and geth and krogan everywhere.

What a miracle that the squad pulled it off.

"That's our Commander," Kaidan manages, and she doesn't manage a chuckle.

"Don't try to move or chat too much," Chakwas says. "Kaidan, you completely overdid it with your amp."

"I was wondering why it was so hot," he says.

"And no doubt why your head hurts," Chakwas adds wryly. "Williams, your armor's medi-gel dispensers didn't hold up. Garrus is working on them now, but you may need a new hardsuit."

"Understood," she says, because that definitely explains why she's feeling the fight so much more than usual. Well, the biotic rogue Spectre probably had something to do with that too.

"Rest up," Chakwas advises. "I made Shepard promise not to drag you upstairs for the debriefing until you can get up there under your own power."

"Thank you," says Kaidan, and Ashley nods, because right now she doesn't even feel up to sitting upright, let alone climbing the stairs from the lift to the conference room.

Footsteps, presumably Chakwas's, tap away from them, and her tone's softer when she speaks again. "Both of you have call buttons by your right hands if you need anything - I need to go and treat the salarians."

Ashley hears rather than sees the door open and close, and then it's just her and Kaidan and a rush of relief that he's not dead which she can't find the words for, even someone else's. When Shepard had ordered Joker to her position with the bomb, the realization that Kaidan would die for her had dropped sickeningly into her stomach; it had been all she could do not to protest more. There were a million reasons she should have died instead of him, and instead they're both _alive_.

"Hey," she resorts to, eloquently.

His eyes crinkle. "Hey."

"I know Chakwas said not to talk," she says. "But I just wanted to say: I'm glad you made it."

It's an understatement, the same way _Saren is dangerous_ would be an understatement, but it feels safe to say in a way _I don't know what I would have done if you'd died_ wouldn't be.

He gazes at her, and then starts shuffling closer to the edge of his bed. It looks like it's taking a lot of effort.

"Hey -" she starts.

He lifts his arm to reach across the space between their beds. Eyes widening, she follows suit and takes his hand. Her grip's fragile despite her best efforts, but he makes up for it by lacing his fingers gingerly through hers. Later, she will think she should have enjoyed this more, because God knows she's been wanting it (wanting more) for so long. For now, the romance of it is a secondary thought to the sheer relief of a physical connection with someone she thought she would never see again.

"I'm glad _you_ did," he says, his voice as warm and weak as his hand.

He closes his eyes - he must have a migraine, she realizes, if he overheated his amp - but he doesn't let go, holding onto her with what very well might be all his strength. Ashley watches him, and holds his hand, until she dozes off.

 

> _ii._

  
Kaidan does not kiss her back the first time, or so much as move. Later, he will remember to feel terrible for accidentally contributing to her subsequent panic, but now, there's only her lips, full and surprisingly soft on his, her body pressed to his even tighter than that _glad we both made it_ hug which neither of them had wanted to let go of, and his complete failure to see it coming after he'd pulled her into his arms.

After a moment Ashley pulls back, and he tries to go with her but his footing is as unsteady as her breath and her gaze.

"I shouldn't have done that," she says, the tight control he usually focuses on in himself now audible in her voice.

Without meaning to, he licks his lips.

"I'm sorry," she says, turning. "I should..."

 _Go,_ is Shepard's usual answer, but Ashley, in his experience, doesn't do shoulds and shouldn'ts, she simply _does_ , and what she does now is start to leave. She gets a few steps away before Kaidan manages to say, "Ash."

She whips back around and blurts out, "Please don't report me."

"What?"

"Sir," she adds, which she hasn't called him in a very long time.

"Never," he says, realizing it's true a second after he says it, and not only because really, as the superior officer, he's the one at fault here.

"Thank you," she whispers, fervent, like a prayer. "It won't happen again."

She's in the elevator before he can think to say that he wants it to. Because it's not that he didn't want it - it's not that he hasn't wondered or imagined what her mouth would feel like on his. He just thought it would never happen. She hadn't seemed interested - he'd figured he was too old for her, or not her type, or _something_ \- and as an officer, he wasn't about to make a move.

(Holding her hand in the infirmary last night had been desperate relief and mutual comfort, or so he's been justifying it to himself.)

The elevator comes back down without her by the time it occurs to him to wonder if he should go after her. Shepard pages them all for the debriefing before he can decide whether or not to do it, and in the conference room, she doesn't meet his eyes and almost rushes out at the end before she can be left there alone with him.

Shit. He made her think she did something wrong by kissing him, when the only thing he would have changed is that he would have reacted instead of frozen.

How can he make this up to her?

 

> _iii._

  
"When I said I wanted to take you out on a date, I didn't exactly have these circumstances in mind."

Her eyes warm with both fondness and the Canadian lager he'd treated her to, Ashley gives Kaidan a wry look. "Yeah, but this beat sitting around angry at the Council for grounding us."

"Wow," he says. "Good to know I'm just your alternative to sulking."

As serious as he sounds, she's pretty sure he knows he's so much more than that. She'd been too delighted when he'd kissed her on Zhu's Hope, and clarified that he _did_ share her feelings; he'd just been caught off guard that first time she'd kissed him. Having grown up on colonies, she'd been disappointed to miss out on the mission because Shepard had left them behind to fully recover, but that alone time with Kaidan, feeling out how they wanted to do this, had been invaluable. And now they've just had far too nice a dinner with only minimal complaining and obligatory sarcasm.

"Not _just_ ," she says. "You're also my meal ticket." As he starts laughing, she adds, "I swear, I haven't had real meat since Eden Prime. And I never would have bought that lager for myself, but you were right: It's not just pretentious, it's delicious too."

"It's not pretentious at all," he splutters, but he's grinning as he sets the rapid transit down, and he leans over the console to kiss her for only the second time tonight. Before ducking into this skycar, they hadn't dared so much as hold hands, nor make any other public displays of affection. Their ship may be grounded but they are still Alliance, and she is still enlisted, and he is still her superior officer.

Here, though, they're just Ashley and Kaidan, kissing in a skycar like teenagers. She leans into his touch, caressing his neck as he deepens the kiss, and with the way he kisses her, the way his hand skims up her arm to her shoulder, it's hard to believe he'd frozen the first time she'd kissed him.

It's only when the rapid transit terminal beeps at them to pay that she retreats back into her seat and says, "Okay - pretty sure this isn't the Citadel's makeout point." Not that she recognizes their surroundings: This part seems a lot more lit up and glitzy than their usual haunts on the Presidium and the ward markets, the kind of place she'd expect to set off his migraines.

"No, I brought you here for a reason," he says, popping the doors open. Once they're both out and he's paid for their hire, he points down the street. "There."

 _Armax Arsenal Arena_ , she reads in the neon lights, and she gasps. "I used to watch extranet streams of the matches from this place."

He grins. "And here I'd only booked it because I saw how much fun you were having at Pinnacle Station. Plus, I thought you could blow off some steam tonight."

"I've always wondered what this place would be like," she says. "Although, yeah, a little less since Pinnacle Station." She assumes a simulator where civilians play at combat will be less interesting than a multispecies military training facility.

"I promise we won't be reenacting a First Contact War battle again."

Ah. So he also saw how uncomfortable she'd been with Admiral Ahern's 'special' scenario. "Thanks," she says quietly.

"I was only able to book us one match tonight, though," he says. "They were pretty full, and it was such short notice from when I knew we'd be stuck on the Citadel - I was lucky someone cancelled."

"Then I guess we'd better get a move on, eh?"

They flick through options on the simulator, Kaidan carefully putting his arm around her shoulder. He leaves choosing guns to her ("your area of expertise, Gunnery Chief - I trust your judgment") while he examines the armor, and then they suit up, a little slower into the hired, ill fitting suits than their usual speedy combat readiness. Watching him from under her lashes, Ashley allows herself to imagine undressing him herself - it had seemed wrong before, perving on her Staff Lieutenant and her best friend, but knowing he's interested in her too makes it feel okay.

He rubs the back of his neck, and even through his helmet's visor, she can see he's blushing. Whoops.

"Okay, you caught me," she says. "In my defense..."

She whistles, and he cracks a smile as he holsters the pistol she chose for him.

"I didn't say I didn't like it," he says, a rare hint of wickedness in the corner of his mouth.

With a laugh, she holsters her rifles and steps into the elevator. "In that case, permission to keep looking?"

"Permission granted," he says as he joins her. "As you were, Williams."

As the elevator goes up, she doesn't limit herself to just looking, but takes his hand for a moment. Though they can never feel touch in their hardsuits, only force, the way his eyes soften says the gesture's definitely felt through the ceramic and mesh. She lets go as the elevator locks into place and opens on the battlefield, and takes out her sniper rifle.

"Ready to move," he reports.

"Charged and locked," she replies.

The timer counts down to the start of their match, and then they're off, Ashley quickly finding a good sniper's nest and identifying a couple more in case she loses this one, Kaidan getting in close alternating his biotics and tech. She'd picked human pirate enemies, and it's a little concerning how accurate some of the terrible lines of dialogue are, but not concerning enough to throw her off her game.

They've never fought without Shepard before. They'd been ready to when the Prothean beacon had knocked Shepard out on Eden Prime, but no more geth attacked on the way to the _Normandy_. Despite Kaidan being the more senior officer, Ashley finds herself calling the shots without any objections from him, rapidly adapting some of their battlefield strategies for only two people. They don't all work - she gets overrun and has to switch to her assault rifle as she beelines to her next sniper's nest; he has to find the simulated medi-gel - but they do end up racking up an impressive kill streak before finishing the round in under five Terran Coordinated minutes.

"I could get used to you being in charge," he says into their comms, as she hurtles from hiding for the bonus between rounds.

"Got it," she crows, watching the pixels bursting around her and their score on the board going up, and _then_ what he said actually registers. She grins. "Could you now?"

"Maybe not in _every_ arena," he says, and she decides to file that one away for later.

For now, there's another round starting soon. She grabs some medi-gel on the way to her next nest, and ten seconds later, she's glad for it, because this round's harder than the last, with more enemies and the VI getting smarter. She switches to her assault rifle, and blasts her way through to where Kaidan's hunkered down behind a fence.

"Having fun?" he asks, as she squats down next to him.

"Hell yeah," she says, and then he pops his head out over the fence to throw a few digital pirates at once at the same time as she fires on a squad that had followed her. When they drop back down, he reaches over to squeeze her shoulder, a reassuring gesture he's done before, but combined with the smile on his face as he taps his helmet on hers, it means more now.

She calls and starts to execute another tactic once they're clear, only for fewer enemies to spawn than she'd expected.

"We must be finishing the round," he points out.

"Right," she says, assessing the remaining pirates. "Overload the sniper, then we'll hit the grunts."

"Aye aye, ma'am," he says, his omni-tool already glowing, but she doesn't allow herself to watch him work, just watches for the sniper to pause in targeting them, and then takes out the projection. They finish the round together, then Kaidan, being closer this time, goes for the bonus.

"It's kind of a shame we get more points for fast kill streaks," he says. "I can't think of a safer place where I could just put enemies in the air for you to snipe in your own time."

"Oh, don't tempt me," she says, already picturing one of these digital enemies floating through the arena. "I want a gold prize."

They win silver, which she doesn't complain about _too_ much, especially as Kaidan cashes it out into credits and holds out the chit.

"A bonus for good leadership," he says.

"I can't take this," she says, shaking her head. "You paid for dinner. You paid for this place. You don't have to be the gentleman all night."

Shepard saves them further argument about it by calling with orders to return to the _Normandy_ , and as she listens to Shepard's vague implications about a plan, Ashley realizes she hasn't thought about Saren in ages. For just a little while, she'd been a woman on a date, not a soldier on a mission, or a Williams trying to shake off a bad reputation, or an older sister having to be responsible: Kaidan hadn't expected anything of her the way everyone else does in her life.

"Well," says Kaidan, as Shepard hangs up. "So much for a nice night."

"So much for the best date I've had in years," she says, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Thank you."

He smiles. "If the Reapers _don't_ destroy the galaxy, we should do this again some time."

"Yeah, we should." She closes his hand over the credit chit. "But next time, let me pay."

 

> _iv._

  
Kaidan isn't religious, but with the fate of the galaxy on the line and his career if not his life on the line even if they manage to save the world and live to tell the tale, he's tempted for the first time to join Ashley in her nightly prayers. He doesn't, though, suspecting it might be somehow blasphemous; he just waits for her to finish.

The importance and the consequences of this one way mass relay ride must be weighing on her mind too, because it feels like she takes longer than usual before she gives him a nod and he unnecessarily helps her up off the floor. Once she's up, he looks around, checking if there's anyone else in the mess before he draws her into his arms. After a moment, her arms slip around his waist in turn.

"We mutinied, stole a prototype warship, and technically kidnapped the crew," he explains. "Adding fraternization to our charges would just be embarrassing."

Her breath huffs warm against his neck as she chuckles. "There's nothing else we could have done," she says. "I just wish we could have had more time for the fraternization."

So does he. If he'd realized earlier that she was interested, he wouldn't have thought making a move would carry so much of the weight of rank, wouldn't have locked his feelings away with an encryption key made of memories. With a sigh, he kisses her forehead.

"Don't get all melancholy on me, LT," she says, peering up at him. "Death closes all: but something ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods."

It takes him a moment to place it. "Tennyson?"

She nods, blushing; it's a look he's never pictured on her and would have never expected to be so adorable. "From my dad's favorite poem," she says. "I'm not a word person, Kaidan: Other people say what I mean better than I do."

Not being a word person would explain why she signalled her feelings for him by kissing him, but she looks embarrassed about it; probably best not to tease her on this one thing. There's still so much he doesn't know about her, still so much he wants to know. "It's okay," he says instead. "I think I get it." It's encouragement, it's belief that they can get the job done, it's aligning him with the highest power she knows.

"Good," she says. "Because the next best thing I could come up with was that I believe in you, as much as I believe in Shepard. But you're the one who made me believe in myself."

"You should have believed long before meeting me," he says. "You're incredible, Ash."

"Only because I fought for it the way I fought for everything I ever wanted," she says. "But I didn't use to feel like I was worth what I was fighting for." She pauses, looking at him, and then adds, "I didn't feel like I was worth _you_."

"Worth me?" he echoes, incredulous. "You make me feel human, after so long trying to keep everything under control. I don't want to lose you."

With soft, warm eyes, Ashley gazes at him for a moment, then checks their surroundings and kisses him swiftly, hands tight on the back of his neck. "This could be our last night alive," she says. "I don't want to waste it like the night before Virmire - bunk with me tonight."

His eyebrow rises. "Ash... Bunk with you, or..." He lets the pause and the emphasis add the proposition for him. " _Bunk_ with you?"

"Well, that depends," she says, her smile going coy. "Are you on fertility blockers?"

What a question. Sure, she'd been checking him out in the Arena locker room, and yes, he's wanted this, wanted her for even longer, but it feels a little soon. Kaidan swallows. "Yeah - and last I checked, I'm clean."

"Then yes, Kaidan," she says. " _Bunk_ with me."

"Wow," he blurts out, and then, seeing her slightly nonplussed expression, adds, "Yeah. Okay," because damnit, he didn't mean to scare her with his stunned first reaction (or lack thereof) again. And maybe this shouldn't surprise him, considering how quickly she'd integrated with the ship after Eden Prime. "I just didn't think this would happen so soon. Or ever, once we stole the ship."

She deflates a little, watching for his reaction. "We don't have to _bunk_ bunk -"

Quickly, he shakes his head. "No, I want to," he says, and watches her brighten as he adds, "I want _you_. But we can't do this in crew quarters - I don't want to mess anything up with the squad."

"They'd get jealous," she says with matter-of-fact humor, which, come to think of it, he hasn't seen any of their squadmates indulging in romance or sex on shore leave, unless one counts some awkward crushes on Shepard. "No one's in the cargo bay this time of night cycle."

Now he's curious about how she knows that, but more importantly: "What about in engineering?"

Thinking for a moment, she makes a face. "Maybe. Damn."

"I saw Liara going to crew quarters earlier," he says. "Her office might be free."

There's something wicked in her grin. "Kaidan, you want to have sex in someone else's office?"

"There aren't many private areas on a warship if you're not the CO," he explains. She said she'd been stationed on backwater agri-colonies - it tends to be a little easier to find privacy planetside. "The only other place I could think of was the Mako, which we'll probably be riding tomorrow."

"Don't want to go in there and blush in our hardsuits while everyone asks why it smells like sex, got it," she says. "Lead the way - we can pretend to be getting your migraine meds."

Even with a detour to grab some blankets and pillows, they astonishingly don't encounter anyone on their way to the little room behind the medbay; maybe everyone's already sleeping or making preparations for Ilos elsewhere. He sets down their gear, then starts to encrypt the lock on the door.

When he finally looks up from his omni-tool, Ashley's face is very close to his.

"Hi," he blurts out, and then cringes at himself.

"Hi," she repeats, with a smile probably meant to reassure him. Her hair's down now, he realizes; the waves from the braid she puts up in a bun every day both frame and soften her face. "Just so you know, watching you work is incredibly hot."

Not something he ever expected to hear about typing on an omni-tool. Also, he really hopes she doesn't get distracted by this in combat. "Thank you...?"

"I could never do what you do," she says. "And you get this look on your face when you're focusing..."

She doesn't end up describing it because she kisses him instead, and then all he can focus on is her: Her grip tighter on him than even her favorite rifles, the approving noises she makes when he figures out where and how she likes being touched, the roll of her hips against his, her curves only hinted at by her uniforms and armor and her muscles and scars he only sees once he's undressed her, the line of her back as she crawls towards him on the bedding they've set on the floor, her wet heat as she sinks onto him, her rise and fall until it feels like he's the one falling even though he's flat on his back, the pitch of her moans when he reaches down to finish her off. For what feels like hours there are no Reapers, no geth, no Spectres, no rediscovered mass relays, just her, her, and nothing but her.

And then there's a wet spot on the blanket and uniform everywhere, but all he cares about is her, warm and smug and satisfied in his arms.

"You know, this is never going to happen again. Not - this," he says, stroking her hip. "Us. The galaxy will keep going, the Reapers will come back around, but we have something special."

"I spend so much time finding pieces of myself in other people's words," she says. "I didn't think I was that unique."

He shakes his head. Maybe she's not the only one who's not a word person, if he can't get this across. "Those pieces are scattered across people," he says. "There's no one person exactly like you, and there never will be another Ashley Madeline Williams, or another us. You're important, Ash. Right now, _we're_ important."

"Kaidan, I..." She pauses, then shakes her head. "Actually, no. If you want to hear this... You'll have to come back to me."

There's only one thing he can think of that one might say in response to him rambling about being important after sex yet choose to save until after the battle, and he feels it too. "What if I say it?" he suggests, but as soon as it's out of his mouth, he knows not to, even before she shakes her head again. "Okay."

Propping herself up on her elbows, she kisses him once more, soft and tender when before she'd been so hungry. "Just think of it as extra motivation when we're out there."

 

> _v._

  
Two months after what the media is calling the Battle of the Citadel, so much of the Citadel (at least the Presidium) is almost finished rebuilding that it's hard to believe that there was ever a Reaper, a rogue Spectre, and an army of geth and krogan attacking it. But the dents in Ashley's armor tell a different story: They made it. They beat Saren _and_ Sovereign. Far from being executed or court martialed, there's talk of medals. Shepard in particular is being called the Savior of the Citadel now. Ashley swings her legs from the _Normandy_ 's dock at C-Sec Academy (which is surprisingly still standing), and marvels at the way things have turned out.

Her omni-tool lights up on her arm with a notification for a text message from Kaidan: `Turn around.`

Following instructions, she finds him coming down the dock from the elevator, and she smiles and gets up to meet him. No one's behind him, so she takes his hands and watches his lips curve upwards.

"I didn't want to startle you," he says, nodding towards her omni-tool. "If you fell off the dock, I wouldn't put good odds on my biotics to save you in time."

For a moment, she's struck by the mental image of flying - or in her case, being flown - with biotics, using less force than that time one of Benezia's commandos threw her across the room.

"Why are we meeting here, anyway?" he adds. "Did you want to go back aboard?"

She shakes her head. "Have you ever just... looked around up here, not just headed straight for the elevator or the ship?"

Taking the hint, he takes a slow look around the dock, pivoting on the spot to make sure he sees everything. "Big place," he says eventually.

With a chuckle, Ashley shakes her head. "Not the Citadel, Kaidan: The nebula."

She can see the exact moment when the cloud of dust and gases becomes beautiful to him, when he finds the wonder in the haze of color and light, when that same light shines in his eyes. "That's... really something, Ash," he says, looking back at her. "I never would have noticed if you hadn't told me."

"You might have caught on eventually," she says kindly.

He draws her into his arms, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face. "But now it's more romantic because you're the one who showed me."

Ashley mentally ticks off an objective in this mission. She'd noticed the view their first time on the Citadel, and though she hadn't yet been interested in him back then, she'd noticed how romantic the view was up here, and remembered later that he'd been with her the first time she'd stepped off the ship to see it. Also, he's calling it romantic, which means he's thinking of romance when he's with her, so she's probably not about to put her foot into two months of looking for moments of intimacy, rare opportunities to have sex, and even rarer opportunities to have more dates.

"I'm about to make it more romantic," she says.

"Yeah?"

"I love you, Kaidan," she says, and his breath catches. "I know I said I'd tell you if you came back from Ilos -"

"I was wondering if you'd forgotten," he says, his eyes steady on hers. "Or if you'd changed your mind. Which seemed unlikely when we kept going with everything else -"

'Everything else' is a surprisingly succinct euphemism for the last two months' activities. She shakes her head. "I didn't," she says. "It's just - the night before Ilos, you said you didn't think we'd sleep together so soon, and it got me thinking: We thought you were going to die, we kissed, we got grounded, we went on our first date, we had sex when we thought it might be the last night of our lives, and it didn't even take a week. Everything happened so fast."

He rubs the back of his neck, suddenly awkward. "Well, when you put it like _that_ ," he says. "I don't... usually move that fast in relationships. But it felt right because I'd been interested you for so long before, and then because it felt like it was now or never."

"Yeah, the now or never part was what made me wait until after it was all over," she says. "I wanted to be sure I didn't just think I loved you because of that."

His eyes are soft as he cups her cheek in his hand. "I love you too," he says, and though she suspects he'd wanted to say it the night before Ilos, having him confirm that he loves her back still warms her heart. "Not because I almost died and didn't, not because we could die tomorrow."

"We've been kicking metal ass since we got back in the air again," she says. "I don't see us dying in the Omega Nebula."

Chuckling, he tilts her head up for a kiss so slow and deliberate that she goes a little weak in the knees. "I think you missed my point, Ash."

"No," she says, steadying herself by holding onto the back of his neck. "Message received loud and clear."

 

> _quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,  
>  furtivos hominum vident amores._

Being marines, they don't often get to sleep in, and even on shore leave, they both have early mornings written in their bodies by years in the military. But when they do manage to sleep in, Ashley tends to be better at it, sprawling across both him and the bed, lightly snoring. Kaidan suspects it's because she usually falls asleep later than him - something about being younger and having more energy and no migraines sending her to bed early.

Carefully, trying not to wake her, he pushes her hair out of his face. After seeing Shepard on Horizon some months ago, she'd cut her hair, and somehow, despite being a little too short for the bun she used to wear it in, it seems to go absolutely everywhere in bed, maybe because it's no longer weighed down by its length. He likes it, though - it is so much easier now to run his fingers through her hair, to make her eyes darken with anticipation of what he'll do next.

She shifts, and he holds his breath, but she doesn't stir. Her flight from Arcturus Station last night had been delayed to the point where her arrival time was more accurately described as incredibly early this morning, and she'd napped in the skycar. She must still be tired.

He slips his arm around her waist. Though they were split up after the _Normandy_ (the first one: she ignored their security clearances to tell him she'd seen a new one flying Cerberus colors), they've gone out of their way to spend time together when they can, when their shore leaves coincide, when their squads are assigned to the same places. His favorite coincidence is when they both need to give reports at the base in Vancouver, because it means he gets to show her around the city he grew up in (at least, before Brain Camp) and take her home. Here, they don't need to hide their affection behind professionalism, nor roll their eyes at "the Alliance didn't issue you a girlfriend" comments when they slip because they don't get to see each other often.

Ashley rolls over so that she's more on top of him, and mumbles something incomprehensible into his chest.

"Good morning to you too," he says, a smile bursting across his face.

She lifts her head just enough to be able to say, "Only good 'cause you're here. Otherwise I reserve judgment until we're up," more clearly than whatever the hell her morning greeting was. For all her claims that she's not a word person, he's not the one whose first understandable sentence of the day was naming someone as the good part of a morning. He can't help but be charmed all over again.

"Should be a good one," he says. "We're not due back on base until later, remember: We can have brunch that actually tastes like food instead of cardboard."

Her hum of agreement is something he feels more than he hears. "Food..."

"Hungry?" he asks. She'd barely taken her uniform off before going to bed; there hadn't been time to reheat something for her. "Did you eat on the shuttle?"

"Proteins," she says darkly, and then chuckles. "Cardboard."

"A delayed flight and cardboard-tasting proteins for a marine coming in for her promotion ceremony?" he says. "Well, that's not good enough for _my_ Staff Lieutenant. Let's get you fed."

As he shifts to get up, she moves to straddle him and pin him down, but the look on her face is far less suggestive than he'd expect with the movement.

"I just want to stay here with you for a bit," she says.

"You okay?"

She pauses, her expression clouding even more. "I didn't say it last night, I was too tired, but I actually found out why my landing got delayed when we finally got into atmos: The _Normandy_ was coming in."

He blinks. "Shepard?" There had been some ugly whispers linking the Commander to the recent destruction of the Bahak system.

"In Alliance custody, according to the rumors I was getting onboard," says Ashley. Her eyes soften as she looks down at him. "I don't want to talk about it; I just want to be with you."

Kaidan gets it, that urge to be with someone who's loyal, who wouldn't leave the Alliance and their friends to work with terrorists, after being reminded of someone who strayed. He gets it because he's feeling it too. So he tugs her down and says, "Good, because I want to be with you too."

With a relieved look, she drops a kiss on his mouth too fast for him to return, then rests her head on his chest, tucking herself under his chin. Wrapping his arms around her, he strokes her hair, feeling her settle in his arms.

It isn't always like this. She doesn't usually drop dramatic information on him before even getting out of bed. A lot of the time they barely get past saying good morning before they have to get up and start the day. Sometimes they don't even bother with words, letting touch and movement and action communicate their love. But waking up and lying in bed with her doesn't get old. Just as much as he loves his job, just as much as he's proud of how far she's finally coming in hers, he cherishes these mornings with her in his arms, a rare time when they can both just _be_ , without him getting caught up in his own head or her trying to prove herself to everyone around. She's his peace in this world just waiting for a war.

When she's more awake, he can tell by her hand skimming up his side, the way she likes to when she's interested in more than a cuddle. Resisting the urge to smile, he keeps his eyes closed and feigns sleep until she says, "I know you're awake, Kaidan."

He hums faux-thoughtfully as she takes his jaw in her hand. "Did you need me awake for something?"

She kisses him, and he smiles against her lips, only to end up laughing when she withdraws just enough to say, "I don't _need_ you to start the day by getting off - it's just more fun with you."

Briefly, he thinks about retorting with something flirty or witty, but ends up just saying, "I love you," which in his experience is actually more effective, making her smirk melt into a smile.

"Love you too."

**Author's Note:**

> Both the title and the last section's header are from Catullus's "Carmen 7", with said header meaning "as many stars that see the secret love affairs of men, when the night is silent".


End file.
